Best Of
Re: The AI tsunami
I thought this was interesting. They put a bunch of agents from the different companies together with instructions to build a society for 15 days. ChatGPT failed to do anything meaningful, Claude built a healthy society with no violence, but also had a very high level of conformity so it couldn't innovate, Gemini had some disfunction but was intellectually rich with an expanded constitution, blogs, community meetings and Grok burnt down the world in 4 days.
I've been happy with Claude but I'm going to switch to Gemini for a while and see what that one is like.
person
The importance of close relationships
I came across this short video which talked about how the quality and depth of your close relationships was the best predictor of happiness and cognitive health, according to an 88-year study by Harvard. Surprising and wonderful, and especially important for caregivers.
Jeroen
Re: What do you think of modern movies?
Yesterday I was watching a piece about relatability in cinema, it seems there are strong trends about people watching films as a secondary “comfort” activity next to for example playing Fortnite. For that people like less challenging films with relatable characters.
It seems to me insane to divide your attention like that.
Jeroen
Re: Ploggers of the world...unite!
@Kotishka
Commiserations, I know the feeling 😃
Yeah, I think we need to see our plogging like a Tibetan mandala: a beautiful effort that sometimes gets blown away by the wind, and that that's ok.
Or like the 'desert' phase in systems of phases: it seems like our efforts are not bringing fruit any more, we are staying in place or even going backwards, but we still continue.
Ps. My version of this was everyone deciding that MY field (😅), which I nearly cleaned up, was the perfect place to launch hundreds of rockets from and leave the trash behind.
marcitko
Re: Ploggers of the world...unite!
A great test today! The path I had spent so long cleaning, absolutely trashed. So many cans..plastic bags.... summer season is here and that means alcohol, fizzy drinks and ciggies! I got angry: "dumb pieces of ...."
Then I stopped and said: let's pick one piece of trash today and head to work...
Kotishka
Re: What do you think of modern movies?
Today I watched Like Stories of Old’s deep dive on why people didn’t really get Oppenheimer. I haven’t yet watched all of Christopher Nolan’s giant biopic of the so called “father of the atomic bomb”, but I’ve watched a good chunk of it.
It’s a deep look at one of the leading scientists of the twentieth century, and one of the things I found interesting is that it doesn’t shy away from showing him surrounded by other giants in their field of science. Science is usually a team effort.
Anyway, this video also touches on some of Tom van der Linden’s thoughts on Nolan’s work in general, and how Oppenheimer shows many of his characteristic touches. We see footage from Interstellar, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Tenet and others come past…
As a modern piece of cinema, I feel that what I’ve seen of Oppenheimer is a complex portrait of a man at a historical crossroads. On the one hand he helped end World War 2, and on the other he birthed a technology that may eventually end all life on the planet. Yet if he had not done so, someone else in some other nation would have, and so does he really bear any blame?
In a way history seems to have a kind of inevitable sweep to it, and if we are to find a personal meaning in it’s examination we may find more truth in a focussed adventure like Kingdom of Heaven which speaks of the goodness of one man, than of an examination of history like in Oppenheimer.
Jeroen
Re: Bodhisattvas?
The Bodhisattva ideal is as central to Vajrayana Buddhism as it is in Zen @Kotishka. To help with the dishes is great. To help all beings attain Buddhahood is also great. Even in Therevada, the Buddha was a Bodhisattva in previous lives although they see the term a bit differently. I would suggest that those warning against the ideal simply do not understand it.
Re: Buddhist Epistemology
@person said:
When I was early in my practice I more readily accepted many of the metaphysical claims made in Buddhism. Then I encountered some teachings on the hells that described how far below the surface of the Earth each level was. At some point they got deep enough that it would put them all the way through the other side of the planet out into space. That sort of unlocked a sense that personal experience wasn't always valid.I've been doing some reading on Buddhist epistemology, the study of knowledge, how we know what we know and what counts as valid or not. Its a deep and complex subject but I think I can at least get to something practical. Scientific epistemology relies on empiricism and third party verification. Buddhism also looks to reason but it also allows for personal perception and experience, something like "come and see". We can't really verify through someone else if practicing the path leads to greater happiness and freedom, it has to come from within. But personal observation isn't perfect, so there has to be some limit.
So, where does that leave me? Both the Kalama and Canki suttas tell us things about how the Buddha thought about distinguishing between how a belief is held and whether it is true. I can have conviction about something false and uncertainty about something true. We are instructed not to hold something as true out of reason, tradition, scripture, or teacher authority alone. We need to test it out for ourselves like a goldsmith would test gold. But obviously experiencing something personally isn't sufficient in itself. So how to think about what come and see really means, what can it show us and what are its limits?
I think in most Buddhist traditions there is a similar concept of "Don't Know Mind". As much as it feels right to hold onto some concepts as immutable truths, there is always room for more information and if we think we know for sure, we close ourselves off to new perspectives. Attachment to our views is to be avoided.
The Heart Sutra of the Mahayana teachings hints at this when the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara is updating Shariputra's understanding, basically replacing the Abhidharma with the teachings of Prajnaparamita. The only time the Buddha taught the Abhidharma was when he is said to have gone to the realm of the 33 Devas to teach and free Mahamaya (who was reborn there as a deva) for three months. He returned every day to collect alms and summarize to Shariputra.
"Don't Know Mind" also hints at a sort of primordial awareness before thought but that's another thread.
Re: Buddhist Economics
When I was somewhere between 15 and 18, I had a strong idea/vision that I would start from 1% and every year give 1% more to charitable causes. That never happened. Later, I thought the idea was nuts/idealistic, especially after many years/increments. But thinking about it now, if one is earning decently and investing aggressively, it actually sounds doable, at least in theory.
Over the years, I gave decent contributions to charity, but I don't think I approached the 10% I finally settled I'd aim for. @Jeroen says it's also a Dutch thing, but I got the idea from the Muslims.
I recycle.
I founded a scholarship to send one pupil from my highschool to an international summer camp. We're currently in our fifth year, have 5 donors, and the reports by the pupils are always of the 'one of the best experiences of my life' variety. Great success!
I did some commited plogging for a while, the last few months I've been just putting away small quantities of random trash.
I advocate for a strong social safety net, redistribution to keep inequality low to moderate, but also a market economy, which taken together to my mind have been shown to be the best actually-implemented solution. Think Scandinavia.
I'm still waiting for an offer, but since I got promoted at work, I expect I'll be financially alright and plan to finally be giving 10% to charitable causes systematically. If that still turns out to be too much for me, I'll at least settle for the 4.2% I was doing for a while. 42, get it? 😉
marcitko
Re: Buddhist Economics
@QuangKsanti said:
But where would Buddhist economics be without the first Paramita, Dana? I find less and less people are giving to the monastics that sustain the practice these days. Every pay I give what I can to my teacher and a Temple a few cities over. Then we also give to SOS which pairs parentless children with childless women in certain countries around the globe. Ours goes to a boy (now a preteen) within a group of I think eight. It pays to really research the organization and SOS is a very good and on-the-level charity. I don't make much money myself but it is a part of the practice.
I think it is a very good thing to give part of what one earns to a good cause. Here in the Netherlands it used to be traditional to give 10% to the churches, there used to be a collection bag that would get passed around, and the attendants ears would be carefully tuned to hearing the drop of coins, and there would be stern looks if you didn’t give.
I myself don’t actually have any earnings, I don’t have a Buddhist teacher, and there isn’t a Temple for quite a ways around. So I give some to Wikipedia instead, which I think is one of the few really worthy institutions on the web.
Jeroen